Free Range Librarian

Tallahassee Farmer’s Market
Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian
The market up at Timberlane doesn’t look like much, if you’re accustomed to “farmer’s markets” with masseurs and string quartets — folding tables and veggies, no oompah bands — but at least a handful of farmers are there year-round.
It takes some dedication to go to the farmer’s market [...]

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I’m not really driving a hybrid (not that I would object if Santa put a forest-green Prius in my stocking this year); I still have my 1993 Honda Civic, which gets a respectable mileage for its 4-mile commute to my office. So the title of this post is a metaphor for how I’m approaching Lent [...]

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I try not to think about this too often, but at times it’s depressing to contemplate that a capital city with two universities can be home to a “Gourmet Guide” — really, next to what you can find on Chowhound, the only local guide to dining in Tallahassee — with a rating system that [...]

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I wasn’t in the mood for Thistle and Shamrock on my drive home from a Sunday afternoon writing siege at Panera’s (a little Celtic music goes an extremely long way for me), and I really wanted to finish listening to the latest On the Media show I had downloaded to my iPod, so I rummaged [...]

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At first, when I couldn’t find a post I had made on Chowhound yesterday morning before I left for work, I chalked it up to my own sloppy surfing. I have been acutely focused on Friday’s talk, as many people from MPOW are coming, which I am finding very stressful to the point of frazzlement [...]

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I just finished a major draft of the first soup-to-nuts literary essay I have written since spring 2006, when I was crankin’ ‘em out for MFA workshop homework assignments. (The essay, about local food, was on request, for an anthology.) Yay me! I hope it doesn’t suck, or at least that any sucking can be [...]

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I don’t get Christmas letters any more, and that’s a good thing. How I loathed them. “We had an amazing year! Look how well we did! Life is great!” I was able to stumble through the year, for better or worse, until my life was held up against someone’s improbable standard.
This won’t be that kind [...]

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“Books won’t help you.”
I had been stammering through a discussion with a contractor about redoing our master bathroom.
My brain started stumbling at the first notes of disapproval in his voice. I could hear him take a breath before he spoke. “How am I supposed to git you a quote  when you don’t even know what [...]

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I’ve been up since 4 a.m. — want to be productive? Try menopause! — so I’ll keep this to one heartfelt recommendation: Garrison Keillor’s short essay, “Bridges aren’t supposed to fall down.” (Though if you’re up for a second recommendation — same broad topic, in a way, but much subtler — read “Exit Wounds,” Pankaj [...]

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One nice part about life is how many do-overs you get, on everything from your love life to your hair color. Tomorrow I get my first Tallahassee Do-Over, where I start a new full-time job that sounds like a great match. But like relationships, good jobs don’t happen on their own; they take work, commitment, [...]

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